An SFP is a compact, hot-pluggable transceiver used for both telecommunication and data communications applications. It generally interfaces a network device mother board (for a switch, router, media converter or similar device) to a fiber optic or copper networking cable. SFP transceivers are designed to support SONET, Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, and other communications standards. The following description is based on an optical SFP, but it should be understood to cover any type of SFPs.